Operant conditioning is learning that occurs based on the consequences of behavior and involve the learning of new actions. It commonly uses reinforcement and punishment to influence behavior. Reinforcement is anything that increases the desired behavior, while punishment is anything that decreases the undesired behavior. Additionally, there is both positive and negative types for reinforcement and punishment. Positive is when something pleasant is added, while negative is when something unpleasant is removed. For example, when your mom is nagging you to clean your room, and then you clean it, so she stops nagging; the nagging is the negative reinforcement because the stimulus is removed (nagging) to increase the desired behavior (cleaning your room).
One type of operant conditioning that is used is called shaping, which is how reinforcers guide behavior closer towards a desired behavior. This is how dogs are trained. Complex behaviors are able to be created through this technique. By using successive approximations, or “middle steps,” animals are able to be trained to do complex behaviors such as discriminating many types of objects and events.
I trained my dog, Hudson (pictured above), to play dead using shaping and successive approximations. I used a high-value treat as positive reinforcement when Hudson completed the desired behavior. We started by having him lay down from a standing position. This was easy because he had learned to lie down previously. Then we had him roll onto his back with his feet up. This was a little more challenging because it was not necessarily biologically predisposed to voluntarily lying on his back. This took about 2 days to get him to do correctly. Then we also taught him to “come alive” which was his release phase. This did not take long for him to learn. Through shaping and using in between steps to teach him, Hudson successfully learned to play dead and come alive!